Tag Archives | Museum Anthropology

This critical examination of the 2013 double issue of Museum Anthropology Review (MAR), entitled “After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge,” (volume 7, numbers 1-2) was written by our spring 2014 class on the Anthropology in and of Museums, as part of the Museum Studies MA Program at New York University. Contributors included Brittany Darrow, Christina Fernandez, Mary Kate Gliedt, Houda Lazrak, Jacqueline Masseo, Maria Montenegro, Edward Ovadek, and Laura Williams; and the project was overseen by our professor, Dr. Sabra Thorner (who facilitated class discussion on the journal issue and its broader context in Anthropology and Museum Studies, and had a final editorial role over the contents). We’d like to collectively thank Barbara Mathé, Museum Archivist and head of Library Special Collections at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, who planted the seed for this idea and participated actively in several conversations about this issue’s contents and significance; and Jim Enote, Director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center at Zuni, New Mexico, who was a guest speaker in our class during the process.

We are now accepting proposals from prospective graduate student participants in the 2014 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA). SIMA is a graduate student summer training program in museum research methods offered through the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History with major funding from the Cultural Anthropology Program of the National Science Foundation.

During four weeks of intensive training in seminars and hands-on workshops at the museum and an off-site collections facility, students are introduced to the scope of collections and their potential as data. Students become acquainted with strategies for navigating museum systems, learn to select methods to examine and analyze museum specimens, and consider a range of theoretical issues that collections-based research may address.…

The Smithsonian Institution’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) is accepting applications from graduate students for the summer 2013 program until March 1. SIMA is an intensive four-week training program that teaches graduate students how to use museum collections in research, incorporating Smithsonian collections as an integral part of their training. It is based at the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology and includes both classroom training and guided work on individual collection-based research projects. Support from the Cultural Anthropology Program at NSF covers full tuition and living expenses for 12 students each summer.

Full information, including application instructions, eligibility, and dates, is available at anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute. Please address questions to SIMA@si.edu.…

Ethnographic museums have a long and distinguished history but they have also been the subject of criticism and complaint. During the second half of the twentieth century they therefore underwent something of an identity crisis. More recently however, many of these institutions have been remodeled or rethought and visitor numbers have only increased. This conference seeks to analyze these shifts and to ask what the remit of an ethnographic museum should be in the twenty first century. Keynote lecturer: Prof. James Clifford. Other distinguished speakers include: Ruth Phillips, Sharon Macdonald, Wayne Modest, Corinne Kratz, Kavita Singh, Annie Coombes and Nicholas Thomas. Join us for lectures, debate and a series of art and music events in the unique environment of the Pitt Rivers Museum.…

The Michael M. Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology is awarded annually to individuals for innovative work in museum anthropology, which is understood to entail outstanding single or multi-authored books, published catalogues, temporary and permanent exhibits, repatriation projects, collaborations with descendant communities, educational or outreach projects, multimedia works, and other endeavors. Individuals can be nominated by any member of the Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA). A letter of nomination and any supporting material should accompany a copy of the evidence of the work under consideration. The CMA President will appoint a prize committee of three people at the CMA Board of Directors meeting held at the AAA Annual Meeting. The prize committee will review the works and the prize-winners will be notified in advance of the annual AAA meetings so that they can consider attending.…